The story is a familiar one: China is the world’s worst environmental villain, with roughly 30 percent of all greenhouse gases emanating from within its borders. In the interests of capital accumulation, the Chinese government tolerates appalling levels of pollution, to the point that surgeon masks are as vital as shoes to walk the Beijing streets. Efforts by the US to shrink its carbon footprint are futile, because Chinese emissions will continue apace.

However, the standard narrative doesn’t capture the whole picture. In fact, it’s US-based corporations, their contractors, and other Western multinationals who are responsible for the majority of China’s fossil-fuel effluents.

These US-based Fortune 500 multinational corporations (MNCs) — such as Caterpillar (which alone has twenty-four factories in China), Johnson Controls (soon to have sixty-eight plants in China), GE, Ford, GM, and Apple, among others — comprise a massive part of the Chinese economy, yet they are largely absent from mainstream discourse on global warming.